Light Drinking Said OK for Pregnant Women

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Drinking a little alcohol during pregnancy is just fine for most
women, found a new study.

In fact, pregnant moms who are able to kick back and relax a
little may even give their children a developmental leg up, at
least for the first five years of life, which is how far the
study tracked kids.

"Heavy binge drinking has been linked for a long time with
difficulties for mothers and the children born to them," said
lead researcher Yvonne Kelly, an epidemiologist at University
College London.

"There hasn't been rigorous research to look at the lower end of
the drinking spectrum," she added. "Regardless of the emotive
issues, we wanted to look at the science."

The study, which found no evidence of harm from having a couple
drinks a week during pregnancy, was so well done and its findings
so conclusive that it ought to become the final word in the
field, said Fred Bookstein, an applied statistician who studies
fetal alcohol spectrum disorders at both the University of
Washington, Seattle, and the University of Vienna.

"This is such a good study that it should shut down this line of
research," said Boostein, who plans to refer people to the paper
when they ask him about drinking during pregnancy, and hopes that
research dollars can now go towards finding the effects of other,
more troublesome chemicals.

"It is no longer valid to argue that we don't know enough about
low-dose drinking during pregnancy or that the known effects of
binge drinking may penetrate to low-dose drinkers somehow," he
added. "There is no detectable risk associated with light or
moderate drinking during pregnancy."

In the United Kingdom, where Kelly and colleagues work, mothers
tend to have a relatively relaxed attitude toward alcohol during
pregnancy. About a third of pregnant women report drinking at
least some alcohol, Kelly said, offering a natural experiment to
look at how levels of drinking affect children later on.

The researchers tapped into a long-term study that has followed
more than 18,500 children since birth between 2000 and 2002.

When the babies were about 9 months old, moms were asked to
describe how much alcohol they had consumed during pregnancy.
Then, the babies took a series of tests that evaluated their
behavioral, emotional and intellectual development. The kids took
similar tests at age three and again at age five.

The scientist grouped the mothers by alcohol consumption. One
group, called teetotalers, never drank, even when they weren't
pregnant. Another group stopped during pregnancy but resumed
drinking after having their babies. Light drinkers had no more
than one or two drinks a week while pregnant. Moderate pregnant
drinkers had up to 6 drinks per week or 5 drinks at once. Heavy
binge drinkers consumed more than that.

A drink was defined as a small glass of wine, a half-pint of beer
or a single serving of hard alcohol.

Final results of the study, published today in the Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health, agreed with previous work
that children born to heavy binge drinkers do worst on
developmental tests, because excessive exposure to alcohol in the
womb kills nerve cells and causes brain damage.

The kids of teetotalers did almost as poorly, however, reflecting
the complicated phenomenon that people who never drink have poor
outcomes on many measures of health.

But the study found no evidence that light drinking during
pregnancy causes emotional or learning problems in children
through the age of five. In some tests of vocabulary and pattern
creation, boys actually did best if their moms drank a little
while carrying them. The findings confirmed what the researchers
had found when the kids were three years old.

The results don't mean that alcohol is good for a developing
fetus, Bookstein said. Rather, there's something about women who
decide to cut down on alcohol while pregnant that also produces
favorable results in their children, even if they don't cut out
alcohol completely. They may be more medically informed, for
example, which might also lead them to ask their doctors for
advice, take vitamins and follow health news.

Drinking just a little could also help pregnant women relax,
Kelly said. Plenty of recent studies have pointed out the risk of
maternal stress to fetal development. A relaxed parenting style
could be beneficial, too. But she stopped short of offering
advice.

"It would be reckless to tell people to start doing something
when there are all sorts of reasons why people wouldn't want to
drink and shouldn't drink alcohol during pregnancy," she said.
"At least the science is showing there isn't any increased risk
of difficulties (with light drinking). That is the most sensible
and cautious line."

Bookstein was more forthcoming. His group in Seattle, he said,
has never seen a case of damage to a child whose mother drank
during pregnancy, unless she binged. He defined a binge as five
or more drinks in one sitting, four or more drinks several times
a month, or drinking to the point of intoxication more than once.

"I tell my daughters not to worry about a drink a day, but don't
ever get drunk and be aware that after the second drink, you're
not going to be able to count," Bookstein said. "There's just no
evidence that a drink a day is causing any damage."